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In the last few days, a significant number of fat fashion bloggers have ignited a movement to boycott Target due to the fact that their latest designer collaboration, with Altuzarra, will not feature large plus sizes. I should specify that no Target designer collaboration has featured over a size 14/16, but they’ve all included size 14/16, which (and I hate to say this) isn’t really a “small size.” It’s mostly going on at the Twitter #, #boycottingtarget. Man, I love a good #. This is where it started.

The bubbling fury at Target’s refusal to provide stylish clothing for very fat people has really rallied a wide array of women to action. I think this is ridiculous, and I think it’s ridiculous as a fat person. As a fat woman who takes her clothing very seriously. I have three major reasons for this:

1. If you’re a plus size, and you want designer clothing you can have it. You take yourself into Nordstrom, Saks, Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Lord and Taylor and any of the major department stores and shop a selection of Vince Camuto, Calvin Klein, Tahari, Adrianna Papell, Sejour, Ralph Lauren and others. Designer clothing comes in big sizes, and it’s never been more available. Yes, it can be expensive, but anyone who pays full price for department store clothing is a shopping like a moron. Further, the excuse that there are no plus size options is beyond trite. Asos. Modcloth. Torrid. Lane Bryant. Old Navy. TARGET. I could go on, and on. AND ON. (In addition to dozens and dozens of independent online stores.) People are getting paid real, actual money for wearing fat girl clothes stylishly and you’re going to tell me there are no options? Give me a break.

2. Target has a perfectly acceptable selection of plus size clothing in-store and especially online. I say this not as a skinny person who has failed to understand your plight, but as a 6′ tall, 300+lb person who’s spent most of her adult life hovering around 400lbs, and has never been smaller than a size 20. I’ve bought jeans, dresses, blouses, skirts, tops, and even pajamas at Target, I’ve rarely shopped their online selection, because I’ve rarely needed to. Further, I’m not a fat style slacker, I’d rate the importance of my appearance in the top 10, fuck it, top 3 most important things in my life. (Incidentally, it’s this very vanity that gets me in the gym, spends too much money at Sephora, and, what many people would consider, too much time on hair and makeup.) When I say there are good clothes at Target, I know what the fuck I’m talking about. If you’re failing to find acceptable clothing at Target, you don’t know how to dress yourself. Go straight to fashion prison, do not go past “go”, do not collect $200.

3. When you boycott Target, you not only cut off your nose to spite your face in that you stupidly deny yourself the aforementioned plus size clothes, but also the home wares, accessories, furniture, storage solutions, and assorted other awesome things that Target does really well. Beyond that, by not shopping at Target, you trap yourself in a situation where you will need to purchase the things you once got at Target, unless you plan on going without towels, lamps, toilet paper, and socks.

The sickest part of this for me is that a huge number of grumpy, entitled fat people who refuse to shop at Target because the designer dresses aren’t big enough will take their business to Walmart. WALMART. I don’t know if you’ve been in a Walmart, but it’s the worst. Not only does Walmart personify bad business practice with beyond dubious labor policies, and crushing local business, but it doesn’t come close to Target’s selection or charitable community work. Beyond that, shit in Walmart is so fucking tasteless, that I won’t go in there, also the lighting is horrifying, but I digress… Remember Target, the store who LOST BUSINESS THIS YEAR because they refused to let customers carry guns, meanwhile at Walmart (your new favorite store) the towels and ammunition sit side by side, HOW RAD.

I fail to see how any Liberal can take their money from Target over dresses being too small, and give it to Walmart, so they can pay women less, and flood America with tacky, tasteless shit. I realize that between these two behemoths, we must chose between two evils, but honestly, it doesn’t take a genius to see which is the lesser of two evils. The one with the cute lamps, stylish clothes, positive labor policies, and striving to make style affordable and accessible. But wait, you forgot about that important, ideological stuff because you were whining about dresses.

Maybe it was the thesis stress, maybe it was the allergies, maybe it was the smaller, but not small dress I bought, maybe it was the threat of spring looming on the horizon bringing with it intolerably short shorts and mostly naked undergraduate girls…

Whatever caused it, yesterday I reached breaking point.

Some of you may have noticed, I am fat.

I’m not “pinch an inch”, “could serve to lose a few pounds”, or “chubby”, “tubby” or even “festively plump.” I dwell on the plus size of plus sizes. Usually I don’t talk about it, except to make one of my no fail jokes [Look, I didn’t get this body climbing stairs and avoiding cupcakes.] I figure if I don’t mention it, you all won’t notice. You won’t notice how much of the sofa I take up, how I fill up my chair (or one of those wretched little desks), you won’t notice my thighs, or back rolls, or double chin when I’m laughing. You’ll instead notice my voice, or my smile, or my bunny front teeth, my excellent hair perhaps, or how handy I am with liquid eyeliner.

I also know this is not the case. I live in the same media frenzied world as everyone else. I know that despite everything I’ve achieved, or how well I get dressed in the morning or just how good I am with the liner, I am still fat. At the end of the day a fat girl is just a fat girl. Everyday is battle against homeliness, against looking matronly, maternal or pregnant. Everyday I walk around Washington DC, and I am aware that when people look at me, they see a fat person. I have all the stereotypes of what fat people are like hovering around me; we’re lazy, unmotivated, uninspired, miserable, out-of-control, we’re not confident, and we’re rarely sexy. Yeah – would you believe that is exactly that set of characteristics that got me where I am in life. I am 100% a successful student, friend, person, intellectual, artist and writer because I’m an lazy, unmotivated, miserable fat fuck. Funny, that.

Usually, I’m pretty confident about my body. I have the rare good fortune that I didn’t “get fat”. I started out pretty fat, and stayed fat. There isn’t a moment in my memory when I wasn’t fat. My appearance now is the logical conclusion of all my other appearances. That said, something happened the last few weeks (I do NOT want to talk about it.) that threw me a curve ball. So, after a week of panicked mega-dieting (I’ve lost 6 lbs since last Wednesday, when I’m on it, I do not mess around.) frantic waddling on the treadmill and treating my closet like a collection of burlap sacks, I went online last night and googled “fat positive”. For the first time since high school, I needed someone else, a total stranger on the Internet, talking to not me, but fat women everywhere that my body is okay. It worked, looking at pictures of other people, women, my size, larger and littler made me feel like it was okay. That I could get up today and get dressed and feel okay.

I am in love with the Internet. Why? because in a split second last night I could begin a process to put to bed a lot of hurtful feelings I’ve been dealing with all week, for this I’m very grateful.